I'm working on a scifi-masquerading-as-fantasy setting...

I'm working on a scifi-masquerading-as-fantasy setting, where the set of islands the players are on have actually formed over the remnants of a crashed colony ship. What other cool things could be done with the concept? So far I have:
>"Fey spirits" - Ghost-like hologram beings around what was once the medical bay, which kidnap anyone within their realm who is remotely injured and either put them in stasis or drive them mad trying to cure them.
>"Wights" which are basically metal skeletons. The defence force of the ship which has been scrambled in the crash and will attack anything on sight.
>Lovecraftian squid fuckers which are the remenants of the attackers that downed the ship in the first place.

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youtube.com/watch?v=AQDh3TQZw9Q
youtube.com/watch?v=gyTN1_hryFA
twitter.com/SFWRedditGifs

>What other cool things could be done with the concept?
Not do it.

/thread

I had no idea it this kind of setting was so disliked on here. We had a good couple of endless legend threads a month or so back. What's wrong with it, out of curiosity?

Either that or Veeky Forums is being edgy again.

Pull a Horizon: Zero Dawn and have at least one group of people worshipping some form of automated system as a god. Interpreting totally mundane things like "SYSTEM ERROR: PASSWORD NOT FOUND" or "PLEASE ENTER YOUR USERNAME" as divine portents or commands.

In a similar vein, have someone find some relatively mundane items from the colony ship like someone's collection of dataslate novels, or a series of novelty mugs and start a cult or major organization about them, overestimating their actual nature and use drastically.

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Wait a moment

Is that pic from Elex?

Do check out Endless Legend.

I'm playing in a game currently that did that. It's not a particularly dark game but a big part of it is that she's a spirit speaker, as a decedent of one of the bridge crew on the colony ship who's spent her life learning how to interact with the 'spirits' of the various bits of tech. When the weaver (A fabricator machine) stops working, she's the one who goes and tries to understand the problems and gets people to go find a barrel of fabricator feed or if the guardians (The defence drones) start acting odd she'll go and commune with them in their metal caves and work out what the issue that needs fixing is. Spirits are a massive part of her theology and the right way to interact with the confusing things is a lot of her training.

Mind you, the game has most of the PCs be from much less neoprimitive places than her so people keep trying to 'prove' to her that it's just tech rather than spirits. Which sorta runs into issues with the fact that the colony ship that crashed on her planet is a lot more advanced than how far most of their planets got so while they can recognise it's actually tech, she knows how to interact with it better than they do.

It's a bit more 'endless legend/endless space vaulters' though than full on 'pretending to be entirely fantasy'. They can use and repair a lot of the machinery without actual understanding of what it is beyond old magical wonders. They've got very advanced forging, even if most of the steps in the process are considered magical secrets passed down from master smith to apprentice.

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I have, that shit is patrician. The Vaulters and Forgotten are basically what gave me the push to try the setting out in the first place.

>Group of jungle scavengers living in the ruins of a colony ship entrance. Use found tablets and exo-suits, which they believe to be a form of magic.
>Broken terraforming machine starts destroying the countryside, is believed to be an Ettin.
>A bunch of holographic video diaries activate around a stately manor built out of lots of ship parts. The inhabitants think they're haunted.
>A few near-human species like Orcs and Elves are descendents of experimental environment-adapted humans created by automated systems after the crash.

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>A bunch of holographic video diaries activate around a stately manor built out of lots of ship parts. The inhabitants think they're haunted.
I like the idea of ghosts being broken security recordings or something. Especially as a good way of leading the players to entrances to the
ship and so on. Seeing a ghostly figure walking around a cave entrance every few months is bound to get them intrigued, and then you can pull them further into the wreckage.

meant to link my bad

Halfway through the campaign the islands are invaded by Italians with steam tanks and da Vinci helicopters.

Fuckin Doge.

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My next campaign will be a complete theft of the plot of the old pc vidwo game Might and Magic 6 the mandate of heaven.

Demons show up and wreck havoc.
They are actually invading aliens.
Players are told by the Oracle (a super compter) to bust into an ancient human military base and steal the energy weapons their so they can bust into the alien ship and kill the queen.

You need monoliths.
>Small monoliths that open up into physically impossible spaces with more monoliths inside.
>Big monoliths of stone that breach the skyline and give way to reveal metal underneath.
>Metal monoliths in the most dangerous environments that served as research stations.

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Getting some serious Man After Man vibes too.

Which kinda monoliths make the monkeys beat each other to death with bones?

Pink fluffy ones.

Have all your gods be the original crew, having perfected cloning and all sorts of high-level science to appear divine. All the world's inhabitants are descendants.
And then have one god rebel.

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>"One of the five best SF novels ever written."
>George R. R. Martin
Is this good or bad.

lesbian elves are actually sexbots

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Or Succubi

You could actually redeem them in this setting too

> Support droids running around aka goblins
> A few dungeon entrances are around that only open under certain conditions and lead deep under ground and into ancient spacecraft remnants.
> A stasis chamber. It contains a couple of corpses, a few dozen empty stasis beds, a 10-year-old girl who fell asleep here befure that space battle, so she is more of a 1012 y.o., a tough military man infected by a space parasite, basically a xenomorph, and a barbarian adventurer who wandered in about 300 years ago and deided a stasis bed is a good place to have some sleep.
> A mutation research module that gives anyone put into the mutation booth a mutation based on what button has been pressed on a pad outside and, sometimes, a random roll. Make sure you are both a nice generous guy and a terrible asshole at the same time. The booth operates on gems that concentrate mutation ray, and everyone in the room is subjected to a mutation if a gem is taken out.
> All interface panels are described as large plates of obsidian that have glowing runes on them, the meaning of these runes is completely unintelligible to the party. If yor party asks what those runes look like, show them this: પાંચ મિનિટમાં અયોગ્ય કામગીરી, આત્મ-વિનાશ

It was so good that when they wanted to adapt it into a film, they hired Jack Kirby to do set and costume designs...

Unfortunately the movie was a front for the CIA to conduct a rescue mission of hidden dignitaries in a foreign country whose US backed regime fell.

So the film adaptation being a sham inspired Ben Affleck’s Argo.

People who hate G.R.R. Martin mainly hate him for three reasons:
1. He is popular, and you must hate popular things, duh
2. Song of Ice and Fire has attracted a certain amount of edgy idiots and semi-edgy normies to the hobby that's already had enough edgy idiots and semi-edgy normies, so you must hate the books and movies rather than a small portion of people who like them, duh
3. Most know Martin by the movie series which started off good, despite some people not liking it for reason No. 1 and have now derailed from the original books into "keep muh favorite characters alive, gurl powah, and fuck the intrigue give us sum cool ackshun".

Killing too many low-level enemies (Janitor bots etc.) alerts actual military units. If the party continiues to damage the ecosystem, parts of the ship will corrode and potentially lead to an island sinking under the sea. Futureistic tech keeps the inhabitants alive and at this point you start ripping off Rapture for some contrived reason

I don't hate him, I just found his books utterly unengaging and I'm baffled by their popularity.

Not a single mention of the old white plume mountain module?

A room entrance marked with glowing runes મનોરંજન કેન્દ્ર - there is a dark circular room filled with rubble, shattered glass, and some valuable-looking things, still has intact runeplate with runes still glowing.
If you touch it, the room is immediately filled with screeching noises and rhythmic booms, sparkles flying all around and some bright green rays going through the room. Everyone must do a will save, or be nauseated for the next few hours, if successful, they are immune to the effect. To avoid the green rays, you need to make a save, but they do not deal damage or do anything.
There is also a small door in the wall in this room, it's not very east to spot in the darkness. Behind it is a cell the size of a human filled with snow and potions. Some of these potions are poisonous and foul-smelling, one or two are actually recognizable fruit beverages, one is vinegar, and 2-3 of them are useful potions.

>enormus underground dungeons with metal walls, filled with dangerous guardians and mysterious treasure.
>a rich merchant lord pays handsomly for small metallic cylinders that can be found in the various underground halls.
>in a city rests an enormus iron pillar that is worshipped as an artifact of destruction by a small cult.

Is this a disco or something?

It took me until half-way through the second book to really get into the series, myself. Once I was in, I was really in though.

I've always wanted to make a setting where all the fantasy races are just earthlings genetically modified to be able to colonize different planets more effectively.

For example, maybe we create genetically modified humans who are more suited to dealing with high gravity and end up stocky and strong as a dwarf analog. Or maybe we genetically modify dolphins to be intelligent enough to communicate with strains of life that are based on humanity and use technology so that they can conquer the oceans.

From that core idea you can really go wild in customization based on the environment to either justify traditional races or make your own.

Maybe the current civilization can also create individuals who can use "magic" by performing a "ritual" to use a machine that implants nanotech in the body of child.

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Yes, it is. For flavor, you can play something like this youtube.com/watch?v=AQDh3TQZw9Q

A room filled with identically looking swords, knives, and weird things of two varieties, large and small, that have handles and something that looks like claws. These things, if you make a "use magic device" check once you've discovered them, strike things they are directed at with a lightning when you activate them. If you fail the "Use magic device" check, you get a lightning strike into your face.
You need an access key to enter this room, and once you are in the room, 2d6 wights are summoned into the area.

There are rumors of a monstrous witch stealing people and sacrificing them to summon demons. In fact, the witch is an ancient cyborg gone mad and turning people into battle cyborgs to fight the eldritch aliens. Most people go insane in the process and kill everyone but other cyborgs on sight.

There is a small area like, may be, a medium-sized city whose inhabitants can make magic like casting arcane spells. They serve a god of magic residing in a central temple. That's a cruel and insane god, he kills some people who enter the sanctum of the temple at random, and endows others with mighty powers, while other residents of the city can only do 0 level spells. All the magic, exept some magic items you can buy at the local market, wears off outside city walls. In fact, if player characters spend more than a week inside the city, they also get 0 level spells, and if they enter the sanctum, which is only allowed if the priests say so, they might be either insta-killed, or get a random level in spellcaster while in the city, decide by random roll for every character.

Giant robots that are disguised as ancient statues, and when they are activated, the people think them some sort of gods.

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You really have to include couerls/displacer beasts if you're doing this.

Either as native creatures to the world, or as something originally stored in the ship's xenofauna stasis lab.

That giant wizard tower said to release powerful waves of magic that disrupt the local elementals?

It's just a survey tower that releases magnetic pulses occasionally to study the local biospheres and soil samples, it hasn't been maintained in a while, so it's pulsing far too strongly and the magnetic waves are disturbing the local ecosystem

Do you mean Barrier Peaks?

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Albion
youtube.com/watch?v=gyTN1_hryFA

The Beholder is just a security drone, with a completely smooth surface it can see in all directions and releases powerful taser bolts to disrupt intruders till security arrives (which it wont)

The Staff of Fire the players find is a high tech compact security weapon that releases a blast of condensed energy

The Amulet of Astral Projection is a high tech device that allows anyone who touches it to produce a psychic signature for long distance communication and personal observation

The Boots of Flight, literally just anti-grav hover boots

The spirit world is an augmented reality set up, created early on after the crash by the survivors so that they could monitor various important devices and similar.

Shamanic acolytes undergo dangerous rituals passed down from shaman to shaman, blinding them in an eye; which is actually a form of surgery replacing an eye with a cybernetic one (the eye of the spirits) letting them see the augmented reality pop ups.

Some rare shamans have replaced both eyes with the eye of the spirits, and see entirely using magic.

Residents of the islands tell of a star that fell from the sky long ago, and was swallowed by the earth, they believe if one finds this star, it will answer any desire they have!

Truth is, deep within the catacombs of the colony ships is a high tech search engine, and should you approach it and ask a question, it will use the total mass knowledge it has collected from surveying the planet, and a massive algorithmic system, to come to an answer

Depending on how high tech the sci-fi aspect is, the spirit world could literally be the uploaded minds of important individuals from the crew during their travel, perhaps the crash having disrupted the files enough that everything is a little more ephemeral, and hard to understand, but they retain enough coherency that they can answer questions and guide people

DOOOOPE

The Shrine of the Forge God is a structure of white pillars and black panels jutting out from a ritual ground. Those acolytes of the Forge God watch over the shrine. Should you be granted permissions, an individual may approach the Forge God's Maw, the center of the shrine, which is a dais with a cauldron like indention. By setting down simple materials, like ores and stones and even wood, and placing your hands upon the dais, the Forge God will devour your offerings and craft you a weapon of your own design, from your mind.

It is actually just a printer for tech components, which breaks down materials to their basic molecular structure and then synthesizes them into a new shape and structure, the authorized engineers having the blueprints for such components loaded into their minds and connected via simple skin contact to the device, producing a mental upload. But now anyone can touch the printer and have any vague objects constructed from subpar, unprocessed parts.

Just Veeky Forums being edgy for the most part. But a fusion of sci fi and fantasy is difficult to get right since the two can clash pretty hard when carelessly stuck together.
I feel like keeping the sci fi sort of abstract helps. Control the way your players visualize technology by keeping its descriptions abstract. They don't see a computer screen because they obviously have no idea what a computer is. It's clearly a window acting like an auger for a spirit or something.

It was something I liked about the early part of SMT IV.

The heroes culture had no idea about technology, so instead their Samurai have a magical gauntlet, which lets them speak to a fairy inside, and all of its text is written in an ancient mystic script.

It's the computer system taken from a suit of combat armour, the onboard AI, and it's written in Japanese.

You also collect various relics from the ruins beneath, and the descriptions are based on the character trying to figure them out.

Praise Na-no-tek